Up the Academy

You can keep your Traffic. We've got seven of our own awards right here.

NOBODY CAN RESIST PLAYING OSCAR-RACE TOUT, so here's how I see it. Presumably, lots of Academy voters spent the winter thinking, Anything but Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, since Ang Lee's chops kind of give homegrown product a black eye--and promoting Steven Soderbergh to filmmaker of the year looked like their best shot at a respectable alternative. At that point, the question became which of Soderbergh's two 2000 releases to honor. My own preference (for which see below) may seem captious, but I'll take good corrupt entertainment for hire over tricked-up seriousness anytime, and one reason I wasn't impressed by Traffic was that impressing people seemed to be Soderbergh's main goal. Welcome to this column's Second Annual Alternative Oscars.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

BEST REASON TO WORK FOR U.P.S. INSTEAD: CAST AWAY No other director has Robert Zemeckis's knack for--interest in?--making American audiences feel consoled instead of disturbed by cosmic uncertainty, and just because I kind of despise him for it doesn't mean I can't recognize it's an achievement. In an art film, Cast Away's long middle section wouldn't be particularly adventurous, but getting moviegoers by the millions to sit through it in a Christmas blockbuster, with only the fascinations of procedure (and Tom Hanks's star power) to keep them rapt, is another story. Even so, consider how shrewdly the "Wilson" gambit stylizes and domesticates any sense of real craziness or terror in the hero's desert-island ordeal. Hanks stays an Everyman just when he ought to be flipping out in ways that risk alienating us, and his return to civilization leaves him merely forlorn, not eloquently bitter about its false sense of security. You want a Shavian rant, but you get Dilbert writ large. As it is, I wonder how many people loved Cast Away just because Hanks's metamorphosis helped steel their resolve for their New Year's diets.

BEST DUMB MOVIE FOR SMART PEOPLE: CHARLIE'S ANGELS Question, as the theme song says: Even reviewers who admitted to enjoying this one sounded embarrassed, but why? True, the fun peaks early and then just plugs along until the nifty climax, and too bad Bill Murray vetoed playing the gay Bosley envisioned in the script. But any movie this purely cheerful would justify itself even if the spoof's central joke--that its supercool action heroines are typical American gals just doing their best to kick-box and helicopter their way through life's little ups and downs--weren't as acute as it is cute. Ignore the "Directed by McG" credit that caused such bemusement; in every way that counts, Charlie's Angels was Drew Barrymore's debut as an auteur, and, as such, it's an index of reasons to be grateful we share the planet with her--her sunny zest, the way she's brainy about being silly, her carefree but always witting delight in the L. A. candyland that's the only reality she knows. And the coy, magical long shot of her dangling in her birthday suit above Tinseltown's lights is pop satori--not only Drew's life story in a nutshell but the long-overdue distaff version of Harold Lloyd hanging off the clock in Safety Last.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

BEST EXPLANATION FOR WHY THEY CALL IT A MIRACLE BRA: ERIN BROCKOVICH Sue me. I'm a pushover for stories about talented eccentrics laboring selflessly for a great cause--in this case, the cast and crew of Erin Brockovich banding together to win Julia Roberts that ding-dong Best Actress statuette, and you'd better believe the heavens will part if she doesn't. (There will also be locust plagues, outbreaks of leprosy, smiting of firstborns, et cetera, in exchange for which Julia has promised God to show Him her tatas briefly.) Even Albert Finney, who could knock Roberts off The Screen with no more than a strategically raised eyebrow, has been induced to let her overshadow him; it's such an act of generosity that you don't know if he's angling for a supporting nomination or the Thalberg Award. For extra insurance, Susannah Grant's script keeps the deck as stacked as Erin's décolletage. Honestly, does she need to get the sassy last word in every scene--on a planet that's apparently been cleared of any woman except our heroine who isn't dumpy or a pill? That the movie is so enjoyable anyway is the director's triumph, since Soderbergh not only gets a good performance from Roberts but expertly modulates the material to make crowd pleasing look like honest work. Unsurprisingly, Erin/Julia's victory does come at the expense of real outrage at corporate skulduggery or much feeling for its victims. Yet the paradox is that being "based on a true story," as they say, gives E. B. the leeway to be hugely entertaining fluff, while Soderbergh's narco-trade epic, being all made up, has to constantly strain to convince us of how gritty and uncompromised it is. If not for Traffic's jumpy, pseudodocumentary style--whose nonspecific portentousness is the definition of arty, no matter how many people call it hard-hitting--we might notice that the drug czar's domestic problems are TV-movie stuff, that even Benicio Del Toro's terrific smolder can't make the cops' travails any less sub-Bochco, and that the crime-family, corrupt-Mexican-general, and drug-informant plots are a bunch of Godfather hand-me-downs leached of their Jacobean grandeur. All of which is why Soderbergh was smart not to call the movie Junk.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

BEST REMINDER THAT IT WASN'T JUST ABOUT THE CLOTHES: THE HOUSE OF MIRTH Edith Wharton understood all the things about life that confused Scott Fitzgerald, which is why she's a greater writer and he's more cherished by Americans. One reason to applaud Terence Davies's lucid, emotionally overwhelming adaptation of one of her most relentless dissections of high-society brutality is that he leaves out the gratuitous fawning over vanished manners and decor that's become the bane of high-toned period pictures--and which, in this case, would be the definition of missing the point. He assumes that since these people found their elegant surroundings routine, we should, too. Instead, he rivets our attention on their human failings--the malice, cowardice, and ineffectual goodwill that conspire to drive Wharton's none too shrewd but valiant Lily Bart to her doom. In one of those bits of movie alchemy no one can explain, being slightly wrong for the part turns out to be just what makes Gillian Anderson right for it; it's as if Lily is miscast as herself and doesn't know why. Anderson's performance goes from seeming inadequate to being mesmerizing, and her crazed, terrified expression as she turns down Anthony LaPaglia's offer of help near the end is my choice for the year's most devastating screen moment.

BEST ARGUMENT THAT NEPOTISM HAS ITS PLUS SIDE: SOFIA COPPOLA IN ITSELF, THAT THE VIRGIN SUICIDES was so technically assured proved nothing, since Sofia had access to high-powered craftspeople that most neophyte directors don't. But her adaptation of a Jeffrey Eugenides novel that I suspect I wouldn't much care for also had temperament, a distinctive rhythm, and considerable deadpan wit, which was all the more welcome and unexpectedly apposite in a movie that wasn't a comedy. Plus, the fragility and strength of adolescent girls has seldom been visualized so understandingly, with the director's inside view of the subject enriching rather than undermining the narrative's outside one. One instance of her control is the way she holds off on the seventies soundtrack until the whammo of Josh Hartnett sauntering onscreen to Heart's "Magic Man," bringing together the decade, its music, and the dawn of eroticism for Kirsten Dunst's character in one fell swoop. Not only that, but I bet Sofia knows "Magic Man" isn't a great song--just the right one.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

BEST PROOF THAT BEING THERE DOESN'T MEAN SQUAT: ALMOST FAMOUS Cameron Crowe is so eager to show us what a sweet kid he was that he doesn't even brag about what he's got a right to--namely, the talent (and ability to ingratiate himself) that made him a published journalist at fifteen. Nor does he ever deal with the problem of making real-life rock crit Lester Bangs (Philip Seymour Hoffman, atypically wan) the Yoda of a fable whose Luke Skywriter becomes, um, the opposite of everything that Bangs thought rock scribes were good for. All that would risk giving Crowe's slackly paced lovefest a subject, the absence of which leaves you suspecting that he became Jann Wenner's star reporter because his perceptions of what was going on were as vapid as they were buoyant. One giveaway to how Crowe's sappiness shortchanges the fractious pleasures of the era he's revisiting is the scene everybody coos over: the boys on the bus all singing along to Elton John's "Tiny Dancer." Back then, the guys in bands like Stillwater thought Elton was the Antichrist.

BEST ROAST BEAST SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM: DR. SEUSS' HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS Speaking of Antichrists, resist those invidious comparisons to Chuck Jones, Boris Karloff, and even Dr. Seuss. Ignore the obvious-to-everyone-but-Ron-Howard incongruity of reworking a gentle rebuke to materialism into the year's hardest-sell merchandising extravaganza. Then recognize, with Kurtz-like horror, that this cluttered, frantic eyesore remains a Christmas movie that makes you wish Jesus had never been born. As a children's picture, what's disgraceful about The Grinch is the way it doesn't even pretend to establish any sort of good-faith compact with the audience, beyond a slovenly assumption that today's debauched tykes are as indifferent to qualities like charm or narrative integrity as the filmmakers are incapable of supplying them. As a Jim Carrey showcase, it displays all his worst instincts in a performance that borrows kitchen sinks from all over--Robin Williams shtick here, Bert Lahr imitation there, straight Karloff steals whenever the mangled remnants of Seuss's story stagger into view. As un film de Opie Cunningham, it traduces even Howard's one, dubious directorial virtue, which is that he usually seems to relate sincerely to the clichés he peddles. Here, he's just hoping that no more than two or three of his ten thumbs will get caught in the big blender he's running.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Esquire participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.